Walt Disney’s EPCOT: Planning, Control, and A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow ​ By Joseph M. Neglia A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School­Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of History Graduate Program in written under the direction of Professor Robert Snyder and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ Newark, New Jersey May 2016 © 2016 Joseph M. Neglia ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Walt Disney’s EPCOT: Planning, Control, and A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow By Joseph M. Neglia Dissertation Director: Prof. Robert Snyder Walt Disney made a career out of revolutionizing animation and filmmaking techniques, continuously pushing the boundaries of the art form while staying true to a vision of a family­friendly finished product. This visionary zeal seemed to reach its zenith in 1955 with the opening of Disneyland, the world’s first fully themed amusement park that, in many ways, felt like a livable environment. By the 1960s, however, Disney had begun to once again grow restless, and turned his creative attentions to a much larger scale challenge: attempting to fix what was perceived as the “urban crisis” of the era in the United States. Building off the ideas, model concepts, and failures of previous urban planners, Disney sought to create a foolproof concept: design a futuristic city using technology and architectural techniques his team at WED Enterprises at learned at Disneyland, and build it on enough privately owned land that nobody could build an unwanted and unplanned development immediately beyond the city limits. The city was to be known as EPCOT (“Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”), and it would be located in Orlando and Kissimmee, Florida. This study seeks to trace the history of EPCOT’s development and planning, but also to understand why EPCOT never came to be in the form it was originally designed as, arriving at a conclusion that for as foolproof as Disney’s plans seemed, there are some factors that are simply beyond the control of even the biggest dreamers, factors that force compromise and change even in the grandest, boldest ideas. ii Contents: Introduction .... .. pg. 1 …………………………… ……………………… ………………… One Little Spark: The Inspirations Behind EPCOT ... .pg. 6 ………………………… …… Shortcomings and Criticisms: Who’s in Charge, Here? ...pg. 15 ………………………… The Happiest Place on Earth .....pg. 20 …………………………………………………… Meet Me at the Fair! New York, 1964­1965 .....pg. 28 …………………………………… Reach for New Horizons: The EPCOT “Sales Pitch” .....pg. 39 …………………………… And When It Becomes a Reality Walt Disney World, Reedy Creek, EPCOT Center, … and the Post­Walt Years .. ..pg. 56 …… …………………………………………………… Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye The Limits of Control ......pg. 77 … ……………………… iii Images A Look at the Progress City Model . .pg. v ……………………………… ………………… Ebenezer Howard’s Vision of Social Cities, 1898. ...... .pg. 9 …………………………… … Northland Center, Detroit 1954 .... .. pg. 17 ………………………… ………………… … Kew Gardens Interchange, Queens, New York . ....pg. 17 ……………………………… … Disneyland, Aerial View .. .... .....pg. 24 …… ………………………… ……………………… 1964­1965 New York World’s Fair Grounds .. .pg. 35 ………………………………… … Carousel of Progress, Opening Scene.. ........pg. 35 ​ ………………………………………… Walt Disney’s Rough Sketch for EPCOT ..pg. 47 ………………………………………… Disney in Front of Radial Plan Concept Art ..... .pg. 47 ……………………………… …… Remaining Fragment of Original “Progress City” Model ....pg. 57 ……………………… Aerial View of EPCOT Center’s Future World ......pg. 57 ………………………………… Contemporary Resort, w/Monorail Line and Mary Blair Designed Mural .....pg. 61 …… Spaceship Earth and EPCOT Center Monorail .. .. pg. 61 ​ …………………………… …… EPCOT Center Future World Pavilion Signage ... ......pg. 67 ………………… …………… Aerial View of Celebration, Florida ..pg. 76 ……………………………………………… EPCOT Center Dedication Plaque .... .pg. 84 …………………………………………… … iv A portion of a much larger model of EPCOT, “Progress City”, demonstrates the level of detail in Disney’s plans for his “city of tomorrow”. “A Look at the Progress City Model”. Digital Image. Imagineering Disney Blog. Accessed March 25, 2014. www.imagineeringdisney.com/blog/2010/7/22/a­look­at­the­progress­city­model­then­and­now.html v 1 Many contemporary American cities find themselves in a peculiar cultural place: experiencing a level of growth unknown since the 1960s, but now having to contend more frequently with challenges such as gentrification, new construction, and increased demand for social services.1 Arguments abound concerning the best ways to handle these matters; some trumpet the benefits of close partnerships between the public and private sectors for urban job creation and large­scale development projects, while others counter with the dangers of overreliance on all­too­transient private capital, profit motives, and a lack of affordable housing and overuse of eminent domain.2 These are serious challenges surrounded by serious debates, but the fact that “growth” has returned to the American urban lexicon seems like a welcome reprieve from the era that saw most Americans of means abandon cities: the 1960s are often, and perhaps aptly, described as the most turbulent decade in American history, and the political focal point of many of the struggles and controversies of the era circled around urban centers. Only a few decades earlier the nation’s population had become primarily urban, but increased contact among so many peoples and cultures was creating new conflicts and contentious spaces. Whether it involved economics, racial strife and segregation, aesthetics, or any number of other factors, it became 1 Frizell, Sam. "Here's Why Americans Are Fleeing the Suburbs." Time. April 25, ​ 2014. Accessed April 13, 2016. http://time.com/72281/american­housing/ 2 Reitmeyer, John. "More Issues." State Lawmakers Tout Public­Private Partnerships ​ as Way to Revive Cities. November 20, 2015. Accessed April 13, 2016. http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/15/11/19/state­lawmakers­tout­public­privat e­partnerships­as­way­to­revive­cities/ 2 clear as the 1960s progressed that a large portion of the nation had begun to see America’s cities minimally as troubled, or in full­on crisis at worst. This sentiment was clearly put into words in the text of, and discussion around, the 1966 Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act (also referred to as the Model Cities Act), where Congress declared the burgeoning urban crisis to be the greatest domestic policy issue that had to be tackled as part of 3 Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Given that the majority of Americans lived in or ​ immediately around urban areas in the 1960s, the thinking appeared to be that tackling issues of poverty, poor education, health care costs, and crime would take not only treating existing ills in American cities, but actually looking beyond existing cities, and, in a bold move driven perhaps by Space Age optimism, building entirely new urban communities based on the latest thinking, planning, and technological 4 innovations. The new visions of the future might be built just outside exis​ ting cities, or in some cases even spring up, it might seem, out of nowhere. The concepts often smacked of “top­down” architectural Modernism: an attempt to create meticulously planned developments that would optimistically emphasize scientific and economic efficiency, reassuring and unified aesthetics, and allow for future redevelopment projects on much larger scales, generated in response to a sense that contemporary cities had become fractured and chaotic by the mid 1900s.5 Planners, architects, 3 Mannheim, Steve, Walt Disney and the Quest for Community. Aldershot, Hants, ​ ​ England: Ashgate, 2002. pg. xiv 4 Hunt, D. Bradford. “Model Cities”. Encyclopedia of Chicago. Accessed March 13, ​ ​ 2014. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/832.html 5 Guillén, Mauro F. The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical: Scientific Management ​ and the Rise of Modernist Architecture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ​ 2006. Pages 1­2. For the purposes of this analysis, Guillén’s definition of “Modernist” 3 politicians, and urbanists the world over would gravitate toward America in this time, pushing forward groundbreaking, often pie­in­the­sky ideas that could potentially not only solve America’s urban ills, but fundamentally transform the entire nature of American urbanism. Yet while some of these ideas found levels of success, the grandest visions seemed to waiver or meet great resistance, never achieve full implementation or, in worse cases such as some high rise housing projects, face abject failure. Not coincidentally, though, 1966 also marked the year that a presentation about one such new, planned city was filmed for broadcast across America’s television airwaves, only this project was not derived from Model Cities­inspired federal or state government planning, nor directly from academia, but from an animation studio, albeit the most famous one in the world. In what would be his final filmed appearance, legendary animator and studio owner Walt Disney hosted a sales pitch and explanation of a concept he had almost completely devoted the final years of his life to creating, and its sheer scale had the potential to stand out from almost any other major development concept of the time. Walt Disney had been known for many years as a cartoonist, a director, and a man who was quick to embrace innovation in movie making technology